The present invention relates to timekeeping devices such as clocks and watches, and particularly to novel mechanisms for providing such devices with an aesthetic single-hand indication of the time-of-day.
In recent years, clocks have been provided, for ornamental or aesthetic purposes, with time-indicating hands which vary from the traditional two hands extending from the center of the clock face outwardly toward its periphery. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,952,500 adds appendages to the end of otherwise traditional clock hands. The traditional clock hands move the appendages in a coordinated motion and cause formation of aesthetic shapes as the clock hands move.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,712,924, in one embodiment, dispenses with the traditional two hands altogether, and provides a single hand which indicates the time-of-day by the position of its two end points. While the one-hand design of U.S. Pat. No. 4,712,924 is aesthetically pleasing, there are certain aesthetic limitations which are imposed by the mechanism used to move the single hand disclosed in that patent. In one embodiment, the mechanism is visible in addition to the single hand, and includes two traditional hands, the endpoints of which are connected by the "single" hand. This results in a usually triangular design on the clock face somewhat analogous to the parallelogram usually formed by the hands of the device of U.S. Pat. No. 3,952,500, discussed above. Some of the character of a single hand time indication is lost in this embodiment.
In another embodiment of U.S. Pat. No. 4,712,924, the watch face shows only a single hand. However, the mechanism for moving the single hand involves rotation of the watch face itself, and of parts of the watch face relative to each other. This necessarily limits the extent to which the face can be marked or designed because any original configuration of such markings or designs on a movable part would become scrambled as different parts of the watch face move relative to each other during operation.